Aims: Investigate the way that memory stores meaningful information
Procedure: Ps presented with a story The War of the Ghosts. Ps were asked to recall the story repeatedly at different time intervals: minutes, days, months and years.
Findings: The recalled story became shorter, more coherent, more conventional, and more cliched.
Conclusion: Memory is reconstructive, and people try to make memories fit in with whatever personal schema they have.
Strength: One of the first experiments to study complex memories; provides evidence for reconstructive memory and stimulated much further research
Weakness 1: Results may be due to demand characteristics
Weakness 2: Folk tale is written in an unusual style, and so is not representative of everyday memory tasks.